Is Credit Sesame Safe?

Summary:

Credit Sesame lets you get credit score free of charge. It is a safe and secure online credit score monitor and money management tool that aims to help you better manage your personal finance, save money, and increase your credit score. Credit Sesame also provides mobile apps so you can check your credit score on the go.

I remember a few years ago I had the same concern when Credit Karma, another website that lets users check credit score for free, first came out. Because it was so new and no others had done anything similar before (that is, providing credit score for free), I wasn’t sure how Credit Karma could maintain its business model. Since Credit Karma asks for personal information including SSN, I was worried what would happen to my personal information if someday Credit Karma could not offer the service for free, or even shut down all together. Of course, as we now know, that never happened. After some initial delay, I joined Credit Karma and have enjoyed the free credit score since.

For Credit Sesame, I actually tried it right after I heard about the service. Unlike Credit Karma, you can sign up for Credit Sesame without providing your SSN and still getting money saving advice for credit card debt and mortgage payment, which are actually the main service of Credit Sesame, if you choose to manually enter related information yourself. But if you want to get the Experian credit score for free and receive updated analysis of your financial situation, then you will need to provide your SSN. After signing up for a free account, I looked at how Credit Sesame works (you can find it in the review post using the link above) and noticed that its business model is quite similar to that of Credit Karma. That is, Credit Sesame makes money when people use their recommendations to, say, reduce credit card debt or lower mortgage payments through their partners. Since Credit Karma has been doing something similar for years and their business is growing (for example, Credit Karma recently added VantageScore to their free offerings), I kind of believed that Credit Sesame is going to do well as well.

Of course, this is not the only reason that I decided to use Credit Sesame regularly. Before providing my SSN, I also checked Credit Sesame’s website for security features to what kind of measures it takes to safeguard user’s personal information. In addition to listed on its website, my source at Credit Sesame also provided me some additional, insider information about information safety:

Credit Sesame’s servers are stored in a secure environment monitored by cameras and even 24 hour security guards;

On quarterly basis Credit Sesame has Experian team come by to try to hack their system and authenticate the security levels. Credit Sesame have to pass Experian’s security tests and guidelines every three months;

Credit Sesame doesn’t sell your information, instead if you choose to apply to our customized savings offer that is tailored to your financial needs and credit profile, you’ll have to enter all your personal information again which is then passed to our lending partners to start the mortgage process. Credit Sesame do not just sell your leads to any company;

Credit Sesame use the highest level 128 bit SSL encryption methods.

Again, I don’t think there’s such thing as absolute safety when you have your information stored somewhere on the Internet. Things could happen. But so far I am happy with Credit Sesame and will keep using it to get my credit score for free

Photo credit: Daniel*1977

Credit Sesame lets you get credit score free of charge. It is a safe and secure online credit score monitor and money management tool that aims to help you better manage your personal finance, save money, and increase your credit score. Credit Sesame also provides mobile apps so you can check your credit score on the go.

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